Pen marks

hi,

when i got back from the mikvah i saw i had two small pen marks on my leg? do i need to go back again or am i ok?

thank you

Dear questioner,

Thank you for your question.

So long as you prepared as usual for immersion, with your final preparations at night shortly before immmersion, and visually inspected yourself before you immersed, we can assume that the pen marks were not present when you immersed.  Accordingly, your immersion would be considered valid.

Even if this were not the case, there would be room to consider your immersion valid, given that a pen mark has no independent physical substance, is presumably very small, and is presumably not something you or most women would mind terribly having on your body.  You need not go back.

This internet service does not preclude, override or replace the psak of any rabbinical authority. It is the responsibility of the questioner to inform us of any previous consultation or ruling. As even slight variation in circumstances may have Halachic consequences, views expressed concerning one case may not be applied to other, seemingly similar cases.

If you have further questions or comments about this email, please click here to Ask the Yoetzet.

The Nishmat Women's Health and Halacha is a public service of Nishmat, The Jeanie Schottenstein Center for Advanced Torah Study for Women. This project and others like it are made possible by contributions from people like you. If you have benefitted from the service, and wish to enable us to help others, click here to donate.